My Father Says Pitch In
It is easy to be a poet and poor,
hard to be poor and not a poet,
and you taught the famine of the mind
does not equate with a veritable hunger,
that sheaves of song are useless
when only ears of grain may sing,
that words may lighten loads
but pitchforks shape the hay,
that the sweep of speech
must include the genuine broom,
that making a pitch
is not the same as pitching in.
—Jeff Burt, Mount Hermon, CA
